admin | Forced Walks

Walk Day 1 From Ovelgonne to Winsen

admin on February 4, 2016

It begins again.
At first its a history tour, a site visit then as the conversations begin and the elements take their toll, emotion and contemporary resonances start to manifest themselves. We hear of a phone call, only yesterday, an elderly woman sharing a childhood experience seeing brutal treatment of slave labourers from the Judenlage, ‘Waldeslust’. One woman was bent over and could hardly stand, the guard beat her and when she could not get up he raised his gun and shot her. The guard then looked threateningly at the girl and she ran away.

There is another kind of memory surfacing here, the child witness who was told by parents and officials to say nothing and not question. As they come to the end of their lives the questions remain and the experience re-surface. We hear a story of children who ran up with food to the death marchers passing their homes. Small and incredibly brave acts of kindness. Dangerous to offer, dangerous to accept. A story silenced for a generation. Perhaps we have been, momentarily, a stimulus for the re-surfacing of that story. Indifference is granular and it transforms as we get closer to individual acts of indifference, complicity, courage and resistance….and childhood trauma

At last through the wind and cold, cold rain across the icy river to Winsen. Over the bridge carrying yellow tulips..not sure if this was a symbol but the yellow stood out, the colour of the star they wore. Over the bridge with flowers and ivy…some distant echo of the original meaning of Wandeslust. A group of us, more than we had expected. Older people networked by our respected and connected Julius Krizsan and informed with such sensitive and lyrical German/English by Irmlinde Florian, a community of local remembrance www.ag-bergen-belsen.de is represented and bears witness in the yellow tulips.

We walked in the cold and rain, we stopped to share and tell our stories. Revisiting the last remnants of the slave labour camp, trying to imaging 400 starving women being worked close to death and trying to survive in such a place. Beating the bounds of the camp and trying to imagine what ghosts haunt the new houses on the site. We stood at the site of the gate to the compound and listened to Esthers voice.

Against all the odds she had lived to tell the story and we were there to witness and re tell it…this happened here. Her story is ground truthed

It felt like the end of the day when we crossed the bridge carrying the yellow tulips. Passing an old redbrick building with two stars of David in relief……no one knows…. To the memorial stone at Winsen. A memorial to a brave carpenter who with the help of others enabled French prisoner on a later death march to escape, he hid them until the British army arrived. We play Paul Robeson singing The Partisans Song in their honour, for Esther and for all acts and actors of resistance. Julius K told the story and then the Mayor greeted us and invited us in to the town hall.

A truly humbling experience followed, we were welcomed with food and cakes tea, coffee and sparkling mineral water. The Mayor read a powerful statement in halting but strong English, his daughter, the same age as Esther would have been, had helped him. As we drip dried and warmed up we heard more of the story of the carpenter told in praise of those who seize the moment, do the right thing, take the risk for justice and human rights. What a man, lets have him as our Mayor!

We finished with a resonance bringing us right up to now, meeting Ismail from Iraq, one of 150 refugees currently welcomed into Winsen, and Karina from Azerbaijan, his support worker. Both had survival stories to tell crossing borders with children seeking safety, underlining the real value of organisations such as UNICEF, UNHCR and the Red Cross. Belonging begins with a sense of safety, in Winsen the welcome is warm. Putting us to shame as UK citizens. As Karina said these are world problems, we are all people we have to work together to solve them. We connected past with present, at least now they communicate.

Belsen behind the barbed wire

admin on February 3, 2016

Its about layers and what we tell ourselves and are told about each one. What happens when you dig through them and question through. Lorna took her first soil sample from the yard of a house built within the barbed wire perimeter of the Waldeslust camp. A pile of earth pushed aside from the building work, dark and sandy. Perhaps Esther trod on that earth. New house, white walls, shoes outside on the porch, dog barking and as I stood guard on that strange and rather furtive new ritual the central heating kicked in. Only steam from the chimney. Mix of guilt and catharsis, maybe they were just ignoring us.

We recce the arrival at Belsen discussing dilemmas and legacies with the archivist Bernd Horstmann. We visit the rest of the Belsen story still held behind barbed wire. Deep in the Nazi built military camp occupied by the victorious British and now returned to the Germans we saw buildings where survivors of Belsen were cared for and where some died and were buried. We saw their meeting places and heard echoes of their stories. Into the vast Round House once a concert hall, once makeshift hospital, now echoing, empty and cavernous. Full of ghosts. The British military have handed it over in full working order. Along with the site and buildings including churches and shops and cookhouses, a new built secondary school for 500 children, also stands empty. Cold War front line spaces idle and silent. Meanwhile refugees trudge their way to makeshift camps. History knocks on the door.

At last walking through the ghost gates of Belsen as Esther did when it was hard real and deathly 71 years ago. The landscaping tells its story, the horror is not concealed. I hear Esther retold talking about the shakey sensation of early fever, the creeping awareness of death approaching, saying to to herself and to her dead mother that she had done her best, she had tried to make it, to tell the story but that she feared she would not be able to carry on. Thanks to the soldiers she did, we will be there on Friday ensuring that the story continues to be told.

Preparing the way

admin on February 2, 2016

First days in Germany

Celle childhood installation

A teddy bear in a museum/gallery in Celle Synagogue reduces me to tears. A childhood under the shadow of the swastika. An empty room with a tin bath and a teddy. A child’s toy bears witness. The bear materialised my tears. The squalid last days of the war, one town helped death marchers escape and hid them, in another, coerced or complicit, locasl people chased down and shot or captured escaped prisoners. The Celle Hare Hunt. The rounded up survivors were death marched to Belsen perhaps along the same route we had driven.
Celle stolpersteine2
The Celle Synagogue: it survived Nazi thug axes and was never put to flame as it would have set the town alight. Here new life and recovery began as Belsen survivors reclaimed the building in 1946. In the street outside polished by snow grip grit, rain and foot fall, my first Stolpersteine, ‘stumbling stones’ peoples remembering places for the people that once lived there, old people who fled to Holland but were brought back to Auschwitz to be killed, others disappeared and one my mothers age dead before she could be a mother. Here remembered.
Hambuhren Tiger Orchid4
This afternoon we are seated in the Zuhlke garden centre alongside Hambuhren Tiger orchids. Here we meet with Julius Krizsan our local fixer and former Green Party MP, as avuncular and no nonsense as I had expected from our email exchanges, local historian Irmlinde Florian, eye witness Hans Ovelmann and Herr Zuhlke, owner of the garden centre that sits at the edge of the Waldeslust site. The walk was toasted with light bulb glasses of Irmlinde’s red home brew. Prost.

Later we tour the perimeter of the site and view the remains of Waldeslust, what horrors and squalor has that building seen. We see some things that Esther may have seen and we look on. Try to imagine and can’t. The tall trees are recent, the big one perhaps a sapling 71 years ago. A Narnia lamp in a thawed landscape, darkening trees and evergreens, the absence of snow adding to the macabre.
Waldeslust remains 3
We are overwhelmed already, immersed. Tomorrow checking day two of the walk, the long haul through the woods to Belsen.

The walk online

admin on January 30, 2016

How to follow and join the walk.

live.

without walking!

if you have a twitter account log in… if not,no worries!
go to Social Hiking http://www.shareyouradventure.com/
Social Hiking will ask you to log in in via twitter so click the log in with twitter button. …. thats all you have to do, if you dont have a twitter account it still looks the same but you wont be able to interact so easily:
you will see 3 columns
on the left column, Latest Maps, when the walk is live on 4 and 5 Feb, you will see the current walk with the WalkNow icon and the word LIVE on it, probably at the top of the column
click on the name of the walk and you will see a new green screen showing the line of the walk with little blue icons if you click on them they will show tweets and links to other social media!
Logged into Viewranger via twitter, the map will update and you will see the walk grow over each day, it may do that without being logged in. It will appear as two separate maps, day 1 and day 2. There will be peaks of activity mainly in the mornings, see times below. Please tweet/retweet/comment and encourage others to do so!
Check out this direct link to the walk on Thursday and this one for Friday

We will be using @walknowlive and @forcedwalks for the main twitter feed

Facebook: forcedwalks

other social media links will be bounced through twitter and facebook

please follow/share/like etc,

use and check out the following #tags #honouringesther #walknow

you can also follow the walk by following me on Viewranger http://my.viewranger.com/user/details/277417

draft route map: http://my.viewranger.com/route/details/ODAwODI=

Times and details for the Honouring Esther walk 4 and 5 February

admin on January 29, 2016

The Walk: Thursday and Friday

Join the walk on foot or online: below is a schedule, we invite walkers to join us for all or part of the walk. If you cant get there, join us online. We will walk from ‘station’ to ‘station’ as in a secular pilgrimage, each station is themed and tells a part of Esther’s story and we hope will open up a related set of conversations and resonances. Join us. If you can come to one of the ‘stations’, walk a section with us, meet us at the end of the day. If you cant, check in online to our social media feed, especially at the times below.

See route map to check locations

Location	approx times	live activity/theme
Day 1 Ovelgönne to Winsen
Garden centre at Ovelgönne on part of the site of the slave labour camp	10.00	Bearing Witness
Oldau	11.00	Inheritance
start of Oldauer Weg track to Ovelgönne	11.30	Justice
Oldauer Weg track	11.50	Slavery
Junction of Oldauer Weg/Bahnofstrasse	12.30	Resistance
Winsen memorial stone	12.45	End of days walk. Reflection.

		Further updates will follow on facebook etc and the blog in the evening
Notes: all times are approximate and subject to change.
Day 2 Friday 5 Feb Winsen to Bergen-Belsen Memorial

memorial stone Winsen	10.00	Opening comments and themse for Day 2
Waller Strasse/Oistingweg	10.45	Indifference
L298 in the forest junction of unnamed track	11.50	Exile
L298 Walle	12.45	Belonging
L298 in the forest	13.20-	Hope
Bergen Belsen Memorial	14.10	Liberation To include Esthers statement for Anne Frank Center reading or playing recording of Kadesh.
		Further updates will follow on facebook etc and the blog in the evening

Renewing the conversation

admin on December 28, 2015

Forced Walks: Honouring Esther. a conversation.

Sunday 17 January 16.00-18.00 44AD Gallery, Bath

Richard White and Lorna Brunstein invite 44AD associates and others to a conversation about their forthcoming walk in Germany. The past few months have been consumed in fundraising and sorting logistics, this is your chance to help the artists find some trees in the wood and get focused again on making work. Its not a sponsored walk, neither is it seeking to raise money directly, it isn’t a re-creation or reconstruction of a death march, there will be no dressing up in death camp stripes or walking in sackcloth barefoot as pilgrims. It is not death camp tourism or a history walk. The session is an informal opportunity to share ideas with those taking part in the walk in Germany, help the artists rediscover, re-tune, reveal, question, prepare for the art in the walk.

Local research for the walk in Germany. Thoughts on blood and fear

admin on November 22, 2015

Winter closes in on refugees crossing Europe, tragic events in Paris and under reported terror attacks elsewhere force us to think about the world we live in and the world we want to live in. In making this walk and sharing it with the world we want to contribute to reversing the spiral of fear and hate. Our energies focus on making the walk in Germany and the resonances we want to generate.Lorna Brunstein and I met with Peter Jackson who has been doing some advance research ahead of the walk in Germany in February. Peter was a soldier on National Service in the area in the 1950’s when the area was receiving refugees displaced from parts of Germany whilst there he came across stories of the forced labour camps and specifically the Jewish womens camp at Ovelgonne, so ironically named ‘Walsdeslust’.
Peter showed us photographs of some surviving physical remains of the slave labour camp Waldeslust where Esther was held and from where the death march she survived started.

More than a shadow on the map now an old shed shrouded in weeds makes it more real. He met with an old man who as a boy remembers the inmates and guards with guns. Layer upon layer of memory and history: Peter saw a memorial to the refugees from parts of Germany that became Poland who had made their homes locally.

The memorial record the places left behind when new lines were drawn on the map. German speaking people living in what became Poland after the war became refugees and headed west.The layers are tangled and messy but there is a shared experience of exile from which empathy emerges. Second generation and third generation refugees from this time are supporting the walk and sharing their experience.
On the site of the slave labour camp there is indeed a Garden Centre and it does indeed grow orchids. There is even a Hambuhren orchid. These tiger orchids were shown to Peter with pride. Somewhere in that there is a motif and metaphor as powerful as the lion and the beehive on the Tate and Lyle’s Golden Syrup tin. Two stories of subjugation and appropriation: out of strength a certain sweetness, out of death a strange beauty.

We learn more about the weather. By the winter of 1944/5 Anne Frank and her sister Margot had arrived at Belsen, at that time there was no shelter other than tents for the inmates. The tents were blown away in one winter storm. Like the thousands of Russian prisoners of war who died there in appalling conditions in 1942, in February/March 1945 Anne and Margot’s lives were ended. Along with tens of thousands of others. As Esther and a group of women were being marched to that horror from Ovelgonne in that weather.

So perhaps we will walk in a winter storm..
The difference is that we will be healthy, well fed, wrapped up warm and connected to the world. We will be walking of our own freewill towards a museum that holds the evidence in memory of those who died and those who survived. We walk and network with second and third generation refugees, survivors, perpetrators, witnesses and liberators, we walk in witness to the past and in solidarity with the present.

In the face of blood and fear and bullets this is the time to be making gestures of love and solidarity; reminding ourselves of the values of internationalism and human rights. If we can do nothing else we can walk in witness. With your help that is what our walk will communicate.

Honouring Esther. Making connections … thoughts

admin on November 13, 2015

The walk in Germany will remind us that a refugee’s journey continues until they find safety and a welcome and a sense of belonging. For many it is a life long search. In the end we are all migrants and we all need safety, security, love and friendship.

For those on the move today their journey continues from terror and persecution trudging across inhospitable lands and surviving perilous sea journeys. Here in our relative comfort we need to make that slogan ‘refugees welcome’ real right to our doors. It is not essential for all of us to go in person to the beaches of the greek islands or the refugee camps on the borders, we can give money, food and clothing. But more than that we can work to greet the refugees that arrive in our country to support them and make them feel safe and welcome….and continue to do so. Its a long journey.

For Esther it took two years before she managed to get into Britain even though her only surviving close family member was already in the country and the rest of her family killed by the Nazis. Even after that the welcome was uncertain and her story difficult to tell.

We have much to learn from Esther, we feel out project is timely.

Please help us get this last phase funded, click the link below:

Forced Walks: Honouring Esther. Germany. 2016

Acts of kindness

admin on November 11, 2015

Click here to help realise this project in Germany

A first contact from Winsen an der Aller

Here the death march crossed the river Aller. We learn that there was another death march after the one from Ovelgönne, in April 1945 days before the arrival of the Allies a march came through from Hannover. 9 French people escaped and were hidden.

We are contacted by an elderly school teacher who informs us of a memorial stone, sited just north of the river. We will find the stone and here the walk first day of our walk will finish and the second day begin.

Veranstaltungsorte: evang. “St. Johannes der Täufer”-Kirche | Gedenkstein “Am Amtshof”

The teacher informs us of this brave act of resistance and kindness and leaves us with a question….can anyone out there help?

On the stone the carpenter Wilhelm Scheinhardt and his wife Alwine are mentioned, who hid nine french inmates from a death march til the liberation by the British Army.

The only thing we do not know up to now is: Which British unit liberated Südwinsen ? They were members of the 8th Parachute Battalion as the PEGASUS ARCHIVE has told us and the Scheinhardts handed the French inmates over to them. We think that there must have been a notice in some war diary about this.

Crowd funding campaign launched, invitations to walk open

admin on November 11, 2015

Today launched the crowd funding campaign to a tremendous early response. With a small fund rolling over from the first phase Richard and Lorna are confident that the walk itself is secured are now offer invitation to join and participate in the final phase of the project.

Check out the crowd funding campaign here….. 28 days to raise £3000!

Forced Walks: Honouring Esther. Germany. 2016

Please share the link widely.

If you are thinking about joining the walk check out the details here and please get in touch on the contact form at the bottom of the page. Please like the facebook page and join the twitter stream…see the column to your right.

Good contact are being made in Germany, Richard and Lorna are especially keen to engage with walkers, artists, those working with refugees and anyone wishing to share second and third generation experiences. The contemporary resonances are poignant and powerful.

” We walk inspired by Esther’s spirit of internationalism and humanitarianism”